


Such Deliberate Disguises

by thewickedkat



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Crap Self-Esteem, Explicit Language, F/M, Ideals are Crap Too, Out of Order Chapters, Pre-Relationship, Pre-War Hangups, Secret of Cabot House Spoilers, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Burn, Some Mention of Bones, bodily injury, but not too graphic, envy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 13:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12582532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewickedkat/pseuds/thewickedkat
Summary: Vee is revisited by the ugly specter of pre-war feminine ideals, feels bad about herself; there are quasi-immortal people to have dinner with; and Emogene Cabot Does Not Help things.





	Such Deliberate Disguises

**Author's Note:**

> Possible CW for feeling bad about oneself, vague dysmorphia, that sort of thing.

Sometimes she feels full of envy-- _ made _ of it, practically, or at least enough that it curdles her stomach on a regular basis. It is stupid, she knows, ridiculous and pointless, but she can’t stop that acidic surge low in her belly, followed by the heat of embarrassment that prickles unpleasantly along her skin.

It’s always  _ something _ , some incidental little thing that makes her  _ want _ , that makes her feel less-than and smallish, a child lacking self-control. Before, it might have been a dress, how the wearer seemed to own it rather than look like a clothes-rack, the way she knew she would if she put it on. Maybe it was the sway of a woman’s hips as she walked, the effortless lure that seemed to tug at her palms, made them want to settle there. Or the woman’s hair, styled and pinned as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do. A lot of the time it was the goddam makeup, like the woman wearing it rolled out of bed with perfect eyeliner and alarm-red lips, porcelain-smooth skin and the most elegant arch in her eyebrows to show  _ just _ the right amount of interest.

Vee’s fingers twist into the leg of her fatigues while she listens to Magnolia talk about this ‘preacher fella’ that caught the eye of Emogene Cabot. Magnolia’s appeal is almost an unconscious thing, some undefinable quality that emanates from her. It makes people’s eyes follow her from across the bar, makes them sigh quietly and to top it off Magnolia has the good graces to not even smirk when she catches them doing so.

When she gets the details from the singer Vee snaps out of it, all but running up the stairs in a silly attempt to leave her self-consciousness behind. MacCready follows her at a more sedate pace, muttering something she ignores.

Vee’s people skills lie in practicality, in easing their minds and soothing ruffled feathers, not raw sex appeal, and she knows this. She’s been fine with it for years; she knows her limits and has long since resigned herself to not being the belle of any ball. But every so often she’ll feel that little  _ twinge _ , that little ache of something in her chest, and  _ yearn _ .

And then she immediately feels stupid. There are more important things to worry about than how one’s ass looks in some leathers, or whether or not one’s shoulders look too mannish and bony in a sequined dress.

‘Priorities, you dumbshit,’ she mutters to herself.   _ Nobody’s checking you out when there are muties and raiders trying to cut you up for food or funsies. There are bigger fucking fish to fry. _

* * *

 

Emogene Cabot is...not what she expected. In hindsight Vee supposes Emogene would have been not out of place being photographed at some sort of charity function pre-war, the picture taking up a good three or four inches above the fold on the  _ Bugle’s _ society page.  _ Cabot Family Raises Millions for War Bonds, _ the headline could have read, Emogene’s image smiling and perfect and raising a champagne flute in toast.

Vee had never paid attention to the society section of the paper Before; that was not part of her world and did not interest her. When the  _ Bugle _ showed up on the front stoop every morning, Vee flipped directly to the national section, or pored over the police blotter.

But the woman standing before her is neither smiling nor perfect. Emogene is  _ old _ , her hair steely grey and coarse with age, the lines in her face deepened by time, her lipstick creeping into the minute folds of crepey skin around her downturned mouth. She looks like Missus Cabot’s older sister, looks like the legitimate dowager of the Cabot Clan. The aristocratic bone structure of her face is buried under over-powdered cheeks and a haughty scowl.

‘ _ Well _ ,’ Emogene sniffs, and damn if the sigh of air through her nose doesn’t  _ scream _ ‘old money.’ She flicks her eyes down Vee’s body, her glance keen and assessing, and Vee does her level best not to squirm under the flaying gimlet stare.  _ Rube, _ a tiny traitorous part of her brain whispers,  _ scuffed leather boots, self-cut hair, faded and patched fatigues too big for your bones. Belt notched too tight. Eyes lugging Samsonite suitcases under them and your fingernails look like Deems used them as a chewtoy. _

Emogene sees all this, Vee knows, and marks it, but her upbringing prevents her from saying anything about it. Vee’s spine locks rigid, her shoulders settling and she feels her chin lifting a few degrees in unconscious defence.

Emogene only blinks lazily and sighs as if this is all some great chore.

‘Wow, you’re... _ not _ what we were expecting,’ MacCready blurts from behind Vee’s shoulder, and Emogene’s glance ticks away from Vee to briefly rake over the ersatz merc’s grubby face. ‘Are you really Jack Cabot’s  _ sister _ ?’

‘Oh, yes,  _ just _ the thing to make a girl feel special,’ Emogene snaps at him, then tosses her head. It’s the mannerism of a young woman, and looks incongruous being performed by the woman standing before them. Mac shuffles his feet awkwardly and from the corner of her eye Vee sees him flush.

‘Miss Cabot, your family is concerned about you. I was hired to bring you home,’ she interjects smoothly, the old courtroom-voice brought out of storage and reflexive as ever. Crisp consonants, modulated vowels, practised and fluid and the lack of accent carefully constructed. It settles up against Emogene’s nasal Beacon Hill drawl uncomfortably and sets Vee even further apart.

_ Rube. _

Vee ignores the little voice, kicks it back into its box and slams it down into darkness with her other insecurities.

Emogene sighs again. ‘Thomas was getting  _ boring _ anyway,’ she says dismissively, and Vee wonders what her real face looks like under the patina of years, with the serum working its magic and Emogene’s appearance matching the debutante tone of voice. ‘Tell Mother and Jack that I’ll be home presently,’ Emogene continues, flicking her fingers at Vee and Mac in a  _ be on your way _ gesture, one that oozes both brief gratitude and towering condescension.

Mac bristles, and Vee simply inclines her head before he can speak. ‘Do you need anything before we go, Miss Cabot?’ Makes her sound even more like the help, like a fucking plebeian, but it’s the language Emogene knows and Vee can bullshit her way through it thanks to years of practise and mimicry.

Emogene smiles suddenly, and there is a hint of something beyond the simple stretching of lips and resettling of wrinkles around her mouth, something hard-edged and feral, like a well-honed dagger. ‘I’ll be fine, Ms…?’

‘McInnes, Vee McInnes.’ Neither of the women extend their hands.

Emogene’s grin widens even as her nostrils flare slightly. ‘McInnes,’ tasting the word as if it is a slightly overripe fruit. ‘Irish, yes?’

‘After a fashion.’ Vee recognises the look, feels the chasm of difference between them yawn further, and the twist of envy first felt in the Rail digs anew in her gut.

* * *

 

‘Ho-lee  _ crap _ ,’ Mac’s boot nudges at Vee’s ankle. He catches her eye and jerks his head toward Emogene leaning nonchalantly against the finial post of the stairwell. ‘That can _ not _ be Emogene Cabot, magic junk from their dad or not.’

Oh, but it is, and of fucking  _ course _ she’s blonde and smooth-skinned and her lips are painted with a shade that makes it look as if her mouth will soon open in breathlessness. Daintily rouged cheeks beneath wide eyes that seem to sparkle with interest, hair thick and lustrous and begging for someone to plunge their hands into it. Tailored clothes and sharp lines and small feet in embroidered house-shoes.

Envy claws sickly in Vee’s gut, green and acidic. She knows her own face is darkening on one side with a bruise, courtesy of a raider enthusiastically greeting her with a tire iron to the face during the shitstorm that was Parson’s. Her clothes are filthy and bloody, and she lists to starboard because of a twisted ankle that’s quickly reaching critical mass in her left boot.

Her fist shakes when she clenches it in her pocket. She bites the inside of her cheek and a tooth wobbles in its socket dangerously. She strongly suspects that if she smiles there will be blood on her teeth.

She does not belong here, in this  _ museum _ , the Cabot family’s time capsule that is like a geode in post-war Boston: innocuous from the outside, shiny and gleaming and  _ perfect _ on the inside, a crystalline world unto itself. Missus Cabot, hair coiffed and lacquered into place, with her delicate bird-hands fluttering, nails buffed to a shine. Jack in his lab coat, buttoned just-so, the spectacles he wears just an affectation because the serum he distills from his father negates any need for them. Even Edward Deegan, ghoul that he is, slots perfectly into this place, his armour clean and free of dents as he stands at parade rest just to the left of the dining room archway.

Vee shifts, her discomfort stemming not just from her throbbing ankle.

‘I mean,  _ seriously _ , Boss,’ Mac continues in a hissing whisper, ‘ _ look _ at her.’

Vee ticks her eyes back over toward Emogene.  _ Yes, look at her, all the things you never have been and never will be. You fake. You fraud. You little  _ poseur, _ with your name-brand knockoffs and crooked eyeliner and split ends, your chewed cuticles and ragged fingernails, your chipped tooth and mouth that runs ahead of your brain. _

Emogene makes a face at her mother’s fussing, a tidy moue of distaste turning her lips to a heart-shape. Vee suddenly wants to hit her.

She cuts a glance at Mac, expecting to see the admiration frank on his face, maybe see his eyes bugging a bit the way old cartoon characters did. Instead, his eyes are narrowed, his mouth pursed slightly, as if he’s bitten into something sour. ‘Too perfect,’ he mutters, looking at Emogene the way he does the pickpockets in Goodneighbor, ‘doesn’t even look  _ real _ . Looks like an old magazine photo.’

‘Isn’t that what guys want?’ Vee grinds out before she can stop herself, envy yowling its way up her throat and making her mouth shape words she can’t hide behind her bloody teeth.  _ Stupid, stupid, _ she digs her nails into the meat of her hand as she clenches a trembling fist again. ‘All spread out and just like a picture?’

Mac looks at her in startlement. ‘What? No! And why you gotta make it sound gross?’

‘I just--’ She inhales sharply and bites the inside of her cheek once more. ‘Forget it.’

Mac grumbles under his breath but falls silent as Missus Cabot approaches them, and Vee composes her face into an expression approximating what she hopes is polite interest. The elderly woman is the definition of Commonwealth dignity, her profile clean and the slope of her nose nothing short of regal. She looks like a woman whose surgeon was  _ very _ good back in the day--no telltale shininess over the eyebrows where the skin has been overstretched, no temple-pinching giveaways, and the micromuscles of her face actually  _ move _ when she smiles. Her face immediately transforms from socialite queen-mother to kindly grandma, the kind Vee only read about in stories, and she reaches for Vee’s hands with fingers knotted with age and the onset of arthritis.

‘Ms McInnes, Mr MacCready, thank you so much for helping Jack and Edward with that  _ dreadful _ business,’ and she takes Vee’s proffered hand warmly, ignoring the knuckles gone purple with swelling and dirt under the nails. She squeezes once, gently, but doesn’t let go. ‘And you brought Emogene home safely.’

‘I was  _ fine _ , Mother,’ Emogene snipes from the base of the stairs, and Missus Cabot  _ tsks _ .

‘Ignore her, the ungrateful child. I shudder to think what could have happened had Lorenzo gotten out--his last escape was absolutely  _ horrific _ , you cannot  _ imagine _ \--but it’s...better, this way, I think.’

‘I’m genuinely sorry if we’ve caused your family any undue stress with the...outcome of this situation, Missus Cabot,’ Vee replies, automatically slipping into lawyer-voice. ‘And I apologise for your...loss.’ It’s not the first time the hollowness of the words strike her, the sheer emptiness of the platitude almost insulting in its lack of gravity, but this time is different. This time, a client hasn’t just lost a loved one--an estranged loved one, and almost certainly dangerously insane, but a loved one nonetheless--but now with Lorenzo gone, there is no way for the Cabot family to maintain their lifestyle. There is no way they can continue as the bright young things they have been, the jewels in the detritus of what was once Boston.

Missus Cabot and her children will die, very soon. Four hundred years of living history will fade away as if it had never been there, and they will only be remembered from time to time by Vee and Edward Deegan. Maybe Mac will tell a story to someone one day, about how he had a job crawling through an old insane asylum to prevent an ageless homicidal maniac from escaping his prison. How that maniac’s blood was synthesised into a mortality-defying serum by his own children so they could live well past the sell-by date stamped in their own cells.

Mac snorts softly at Vee’s words but says nothing. ‘Thank you, dear, that’s very thoughtful,’ Missus Cabot says, and Vee tries her best not to picture the skull under her skin. ‘It  _ has _ been a long time for us, long enough I think. We’ve gotten so much more time than other people, and we’re grateful for that.’

‘ _ Some _ of us aren’t ready,’ Emogene grumbles, clearly eavesdropping.

‘Emogene,’ her mother says sharply, expression hardening around the eyes, and Emogene falls quiet. Missus Cabot turns her attention back to Vee, face softening. ‘But you’re injured, dear. Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I’m fine, ma’am, truly--’ Vee starts, but Mac interrupts.

‘We used our last stimpaks on the way back here. There was a deathclaw in Lynn Woods, and she was already busted up from the raiders in that hellhole of a hospital,’ he says bluntly, and Missus Cabot flinches.

‘ _ Mac _ ,’ Vee hisses, feeling embarrassment rise in a warm flood over her face. It churns in the negative space just under her ribs, just beneath the envy still circling predatorily, and Vee prepares to be escorted out of the Cabot home, the coarseness of Mac’s mien too much for the refined and smooth Cabot palate. The roughness of their appearances like offending fingerprints on polished silver, or a noseprint on glass.

Missus Cabot only tugs at Vee’s hand after scrutinising her thoughtfully. ‘Well, then, let’s get you patched up. And you’re staying for supper, aren’t you? It’s the least we can do,’ and she leads them past Edward into the dining room.

* * *

 

The meal is an ordeal for Vee, who only wants to escape the pre-war brightness of the Cabots’ household--the light sconces don’t even have  _ dust _ on them, for fuck’s sake; does Edward do  _ all _ the shitwork for this family?--and go back to the quiet safety of Sanctuary, where her dog is and her workbench with its comforting smell of gun oil and grease, where her clockwork uncle smokes too much and mutters over old files.

There are no shadows in Cabot House, only the ones created in the folds of her overlarge fatigues, the clumsiness of her stitched patches, visible grain of the leather of her boots. The manor says  _ Come in _ , says  _ Step inside _ , but it also says  _ Do not touch, don’t you dare _ . It whispers  _ Don’t breathe, don’t step, do not even move.  _

The slide of silverware over fine china is grating to her ears. Mac chews with his mouth open. Emogene stares unabashedly at his lack of manners and pushes Insta-Mash into lumpy pyramids like a child. 

Vee wants to take the caps she and Mac are due and run, but Missus Cabot had been kind, hadn’t paid any attention to the dirt under her nails when she wrapped thin fabric around the broken fingers of Vee’s left hand with care and precision. She hadn’t said anything when Jack had probed at the swollen flesh around Vee’s ankle, even though her socks smelled abominably and there was dirt in her boot when Jack slid it off.

‘Tilt your head, dear, there’s a good girl. Now, this will sting a bit,’ was all she’d murmured before sliding the needle of a stimpak into the skin of her neck.

Missus Cabot had been welcoming in the only way she knew, with no artifice, no sense of descending from up on high to dirty her own hands with the  _ hoi polloi _ .

Vee picks at her food, careful not to seem too eager.  _ Or hungry. Or poor, _ that little voice whispers maliciously, and she subtly checks to make sure she’s using the right fork, straightens her spine a bit. 

‘Edward tells us you’re pre-war, Ms McInnes,’ Missus Cabot says from the other end of the table, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. ‘And yet you’re not like him.’

‘Cryostasis, Mother,’ Jack puts in, ‘it’s where a person--’

‘We  _ know _  what it is, Jack, we’re not stupid,’ Emogene says, leveling the top third of her mashed potato pyramid.

Missus Cabot clears her throat pointedly and her children fall silent. Edward offers Vee the basket that has warm razorgrain rolls and she passes it to Mac, who takes the last two without asking if anyone else wants any. Vee cringes internally at the gaffe, but Mac wouldn’t give two shits about social niceties people expected at table two hundred years gone. 

‘What did you do, before the war?’ Missus Cabot asks, and Vee swallows before speaking, sliding her tongue over her teeth once before opening her mouth.

‘I was a lawyer, worked for the DA’s office. My father and uncle were both detectives.’

‘Perhaps I knew them? Our family did have a good relationship with Boston’s finest; we were very active in the Fraternal Order of Police,’ Missus Cabot says.

‘Giving out money doesn’t make you a part of something, Mother,’ Emogene snorts. ‘Besides, she’s Irish.’

_ And there it is, _ Vee thinks sourly,  _ two hundred years and high society is still as fucking racist as ever. _ There is a muffled thump from under the table as Jack kicks at his sister, who hisses in response. Vee’s fingers tighten around the handle of her knife unconsciously. Mac, oblivious to it all, chases dribbles of gravy around on his plate with a chunk of roll. 

Missus Cabot picks up her water glass and takes a sip. She presses the napkin to her mouth once more. ‘Emogene, you’re excused,’ she says mildly.

‘I’m not finished,’ Emogene retorts, not quite whining, and Vee suddenly wonders how she was ever envious of this girl, this  _ child _ who is four hundred years old in a come-fuck-me body, who ran off to join a cult because she was  _ bored _ and is now embarrassing her mother in front of guests.

‘Yes, you are,’ her mother snaps, voice whipcrack cold, and Emogene blanches. ‘You are  _ excused. _ ’

Mac looks up, takes in the situation with a blink, and hastily returns his attention to his plate. ‘Mom-voice,’ Vee hears him mutter quietly. ‘That means  _ business _ .’

Emogene rises gracefully, back ramrod-straight, and sets her napkin down to the right of her plate. ‘Thank you for the dinner, Edward,’ she says politely, subdued, and Edward nods in reply. She leaves the room, and there is silence for a moment before a door is heard slamming from upstairs.

‘I do apologise, Ms McInnes, Mr MacCready. My daughter can be frightfully rude at times. I do hope that won’t put you off the rest of your meal,’ Missus Cabot says, and resumes eating.

‘She’s probably tired; it’s been a long day,’ Vee smiles her lawyer-smile, and Jack snorts.

‘My sister is a bitch,’ he offers matter-of-factly, and his mother gives a long-suffering sigh.

‘Not you too, Jack. Please. We have  _ company _ .’

‘Does this mean I can have her food?’ Mac asks around a mouthful of roll, chewing noisily, and four pairs of eyes turn to stare at him. ‘What? Just gonna go to waste otherwise, right?’

Something inside Vee wants to wilt and immediately apologise for what is most certainly seen as his  _ boorishness _ , something that should scandalise her simply by association-- _ rube _ comes the whisper again, and now it sounds like her long-dead mother-in-law--but Missus Cabot only replies ‘Of course, Mr MacCready, do help yourself,’ and smiles kindly.

‘Wait,’ Edward rumbles from his seat, leaning forward, ‘McInnes. You said your dad was a detective. Was his name Liam? Liam McInnes?’

Vee watches Mac lean across the table to nick Emogene’s plate, long spindly wrists pale from being concealed under his duster sleeves.  _ Pardon his boarding-house reach, _ she wants to say, but nods at Edward instead. ‘Yes sir, that’s him. Worked out of the 5-4 after transferring up from Philly. Were you on the force?’

‘Nah,’ Edward replies, ‘I was a bail bondsman. But I met him a couple times. Good man. Shame what happened to him.’

‘What happened, Boss?’ Mac scrapes the congealing Insta-Mash mountain onto his own plate. Vee stifles a flinch at the noise.

‘He was on a joint operation with Vice and a few others from the BADTFL office, down Southie. Caught a throat full of shotgun pellets on breach because the tac team dropped the ball. Dead in less than thirty seconds.’ It’s an old pain, well-scarred, and she is proud of her steady voice.

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry,’ Missus Cabot says softly. ‘How old were you? What about your mother?’

‘Thank you, ma’am. I was fifteen, and I never knew my mother. She passed while giving birth to me. My uncle took care of me after my father was killed.’ Vee takes another bite of Salisbury steak to stave off any further questions.

‘In the line of duty, eh? Then your father was a hero,’ Jack opines, and Vee swallows with difficulty. It’s a platitude that stings worse than  _ I’m sorry for your loss _ , elevating a shitty occurrence to something that sounds like it deserves more merit than it was due.

‘With respect, Jack, he wasn’t. He was doing his job, plain and simple.’ The sharpness in her tone makes her speech slip, her real accent peeking out from behind the curtains of affect. ‘He was on an op, and caught shit because some skel got lucky with a gun. All there is to it.’ The  _ on _ and  _ caught _ bend and flex in her mouth, the lazy drawn-out rolling stretch of vowels turning the words polysyllabic, and she clears her throat self-consciously. ‘Please excuse my language, ma’am.’

‘No need. Still, you have our sympathies,’ Missus Cabot says airily. ‘Edward, will dessert be ready soon? We could take it in the sitting room, and have our cocktails afterward.’

‘Why don’t we just have it here?’ Mac asks Vee quietly when Edward gets up to retrieve dessert from the kitchen. Mac gestures to the silverware. ‘I mean, it’s not like we’ve even used half this stuff.’

‘Just go with it, it’s old-world stuff,’ she mutters to him while Jack extols the virtues of a single-malt he keeps for ‘special occasions.’

‘They have a special room for  _ dessert _ ? Pre-war people are  _ weird _ . Uh, no offence, Boss.’

Vee grunts in response, just wanting to get  _ out _ of Cabot House, away from its overbearing light and cleanliness and lack of grit, away from its smothering stuffiness and the soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the front room, marking the Cabot family’s borrowed time. Despite Missus Cabot’s kindness and warmth, despite Jack’s ‘hail-fellow-well-met’ handshakes--and certainly despite Emogene’s lip-curling disdain for Vee and MacCready--Cabot House feels like a tomb that hasn’t been sealed yet, a mausoleum with the breath of life still circulating through it, an echo of a goodbye that hasn’t been given voice.

It is whistling past the graveyard, its inhabitants playing at being real, clinging to a facsimile of being alive. It is a pastiche of life without even a trace of irony. An illusion that sours the envy curdling the dinner in Vee’s stomach into pity.

After dessert (Fancy Lads cakes artfully arranged by Edward, on a polished silver tray and interspersed with lurid purple slices of mutfruit) and drinks (Mac knocks his Scotch back and immediately goes into a coughing fit), Missus Cabot sees them to the door and presses a pouch heavy with caps into Vee’s hands.

‘Thank you both, again, so very much. I do hope we can do this again sometime, under happier circumstances, when we all aren’t so...tense,’ she says warmly, and smiles. Her teeth are small and white and perfectly even with one another.

‘Of course,’ Vee replies, ‘we’d look forward to it.’

Both of them know that such a thing will never happen. That very soon Edward will turn off all the lights for the last time, will hang black cloth over the mirrors, and open the windows. He will stop the grandfather clock in the living room from ticking and still its pendulum.

But manners dictate the pretence be kept up, even for just a few more moments.

Missus Cabot’s eyes twinkle as she squeezes Vee’s hands.

And then the door closes quietly, the stone rolling over the mouth of the tomb.

The city is still in the gloaming, only the finely-tuned rumblepurr of the nearby sentry bot breaking the silence.

‘Jee- _ zus _ , I thought we’d never get outta there,’ Mac exclaims, stretching his arms and bringing his rifle around his shoulder. ‘Was pre-war life all like that? All…’ he waggles his fingers. ‘Ooh and aah and don’t drink the Scotch  _ that _ way?’

‘Their world was,’ Vee says distantly, ‘mine wasn’t.’

‘Yeah, but you went all, like, formal in there, Boss.’ He wiggles his head and rolls his shoulders. ‘You... _ fit _ , kinda. Even how you talked.’

Vee scowls faintly and feels heat rise along her sides. ‘No, I  _ didn’t _ fit. Wasn’t that painfully obvious?’ Now he’s just mocking her; he can’t have been  _ that _ oblivious.

_ Rube. _

Mac  _ pfft _ s and scratches at the back of his neck. ‘None of that was  _ real _ . People don’t look that way anymore, don’t do what they do or eat like they do. It was like some sorta weird story, like a dream you couldn’t wake up from.’

‘Plenty of people looked like that, Before. That, where I’m from?’ She points to the house and tastes the ghost of blood on her teeth. ‘That’s  _ goals _ , Mac. That’s an ideal.’ She has no idea why she’s so prickly about this, why she feels the idiotic urge to defend the Cabots when not ten minutes ago she was itching to escape the bell-jar of their house.

Vee pictures the cupid’s bow of Emogene’s upper lip, the sheen of nail varnish at her fingertips.

Mac huffs a disbelieving laugh. ‘Seriously? People  _ wanted _ that? Everything just  _ so _ and perfect and don’t you dare touch anything? Jesus. Even the people in there were like  _ dolls _ . Creepy, creepy dolls.’

Something hot and unpleasant uncurls inside Vee’s chest. ‘Dolls,’ she repeats flatly, incredulously. ‘Even you commented on Emogene, Mac.’  _ You can’t tell me you didn’t find her attractive, _ she wants to spit, irrationally and illogically, all the tension over the past few hours coiled inside her like a spring, a finger depressing a trigger, pointed directly at Mac because no one else saw the inside of Cabot House, no one else would understand.

_ Stupid. Stupid. _

He stares at her. ‘How could I not say anything?’ he says, confused, and Vee wants to shrivel up and be blown away on the breeze coming from the river. ‘Someone looks like that, all painted up like she is? Gotta be something  _ off _ about her, right? And there is, she’s a total bi--brat. A spoiled brat.’

And just like that, with only a few words, the spring inside Vee relaxes, an inexplicable flood of relief loosening her joints and she nearly slumps with the force of it.

‘If it looks too good to be true, it is,’ he continues, ‘I don’t trust anything that doesn’t have a little bit of dirt on it.’ He squints at her. ‘Didn’t think I had to tell you that, Boss.’

‘Oh,’ she says faintly.

‘You all right, Boss? You’re lookin’ a little peaky.’

‘Five by five,’ she says automatically, and gives herself a shake. She pulls her sidearm and lets her finger rest comfortingly on the trigger guard, barrel reassuring along her thigh.

‘Right,’ Mac drawls doubtfully, but doesn’t add anything else as he follows her into the shadows, the city groaning around them.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is almost an experiment in formatting; I expect to do more and hope I can shoehorn it into being a sort of collection, provided they cooperate. Which, at this point, is no guarantee. Feedback welcome as well as concrit.


End file.
